This creates a feeling of conspiracy, like the reader has just glimpsed the title on a sealed manila folder and now needs to dig through the secrets of powerful men to discover... just what is The Antigone Cypher?

Parodied in Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 405 ("Being from Another Planet"). During the film a bookshelf is shown, and Joel and the 'Bots begin rattling off a Long List of fictional titles from "the Ludlum library".

Ludlum also parodied it himself, by having one character write bestselling thrillers which always have a single-word title connected to the action like "TANK!" or "SHARK!" — other characters comment on how predictable he is for it.

Also parodied in Series 4 Episode 6 of Armando Iannuccis Charm Offensive, which had a round called "The Bourne Ulti-Ludlum" whereby panel members drew [the] + [normal noun] + [exotic noun] from hats to create titles like "The Byzantium Potato". "Who thinks potato is an exotic noun?"

Adam Hall relied on this formula for his Quiller spy novels — The Quiller Memorandum, The Tango Briefing, The Cobra Manifesto, etc, until The Peking Target. Then after that it was Quiller Northlight, Quiller Barracuda, Quiller's Run and so on.

Parodied in the Discworld novel The Last Continent, where a humorous aside notes how any self-improving book you bring along for beach reading seems to transform into a conspiracy thriller with at least one Greek letter in the title, like The Gamma Imperative or The Mu Kau Pi Caper.

Tom Clancy's Powerplay series, 'Bio-Strike'

Whether live or animated, classic Star Trek liked these titles, with examples such as "The Corbomite Maneuver", "The Alternative Factor", "The Enterprise Incident", "The Lorelei Signal", "The Ambergris Element", and many more.

Next Generation continued to carry the tradition, although a bit less enthusiastically: "The Icarus Factor" and "The Vengeance Factor" are perhaps the only inarguable examples, with others, like "The Naked Now," as borderline cases. Star Trek: Voyager also got into the act, with "The Omega Directive," "The Voyager Conspiracy," and "The Killing Game."

ThisPenny Arcade comic pokes fun at a similar theme among espionage video games.

Every episode title from The Big Bang Theory, although it's played for laughs ("The Fuzzy Boots Corollary", "The Hamburger Postulate", etc.). It should be noted that these are intended to sound scientific, rather than thrilling.

The original US edition of Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers was titled The Dawson Pedigree, though later editions have reverted to Sayers' title.

In Warehouse 13, Claudia Donovan tries to hack into the Warehouse computer and finds out that this was anticipated, and she's activated something called the "Donovan Contingency". Her reaction: "Cool! I'm the star of a Ludlum novel."

Parodied in a Saturday Night Live segment for fictional author Harlan Kane's new novel, The Abacus Conundrum. Other books by the author include The Medici Codex, The Genghis Rubicon, The Harlequin Protocol, The Ichabod Formula, The Pinochet Sudoku, the Nostradamus Mechanism, The Godiva Gyroscope, The Pokemon Directive, The Vespucci Containment, The Fuddrucker Ultimatum, The Marmaduke Betrayal, The Brenda Effect, The Picasso Embrogio, and Mac For Dummies.

S.S. Van Dyne (the penname used by Willard Huntington Wright) had a strict format for his Philo Vance novels: "The" (six letter noun) "Murder Case". He only broke the format once, for "The Gracie Allen Murder Case".

An animal which seemingly disappears from the fossil record only to reappear at a later point is known as a "Lazarus taxon".

In, Gone Home, Katie's father was a writer of novels with titles like these, such as The Accidental Pariah and The Accidental Savior. Later, you discover he's in the process of writing The Accidental Human.

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